I've got an idea for an RPG that's been bugging me for a while. Not sure if it's been done before, but I'd like to see an AU RPG based on a Sith victory at Ruusan. The plot summary I had in mind would go like this:

A millennium after Lord Kaan defeated the Army of Light and shattered the Jedi Order, the galaxy groans under the weight of its Sith overlords. After a thousand years of enforced peace, the Empire is showing signs of strain. Sith politics, always volatile, have been growing increasingly vicious, with several prominent Sith Lords turning up dead in their homes, slain with a lightsaber by an unknown assassin. This, coupled with a growing rebel movement and a protracted war with the enigmatic Chiss, threatens to tear apart all that the Brotherhood of Darkness has worked so hard to build.

Can the Brotherhood overcome these challenges and persevere as it has in the past? Or will it be dragged down by the designs of a secret faction of Sith heretics dedicated to making Darth Bane's vision a reality?

In a galaxy full of intrigue, betrayal, and deadly secrets, the most dangerous secret of all lies within the chaotic regions of the Outer Rim: Lord Kaan's purge of the ancient Jedi Order wasn't quite as thorough as the Sith would like to believe...

Really, all I have is this premise. I haven't thought out any specific story arcs or characters (aside from a few essentials from canon like Palps, Kenobi, and Windu), but I figured I'd throw the idea out there to see if anyone wants to use it.

It is another good twist for things, but I would really need to know what the game itself looks like. Because backgrounds simply make no good games. Who would the players play? What should be the rough plot?

Without that there is no real substance to the game.

Harry Potter Game? Slippery ground since everything is told and the story ended. But I assume now you can at least work with an end . . . what would it been about? After Hollows? Before? Meanwhile? But IÂ´d like to play in a Hogwards based game. I am one of the people who never admit it in public but love the novels

It is another good twist for things, but I would really need to know what the game itself looks like. Because backgrounds simply make no good games. Who would the players play? What should be the rough plot?

Without that there is no real substance to the game.

That's true. Like I said, I haven't really thought out all the details, 'cause I'll probably never have the time to GM the thing myself. I did forget to include the playable factions though:

1. Brotherhood of Darkness- Play as a Sith Lord, Master, Adept, Assassin, etc... Defend the Empire against its numerous enemies, external and internal.

2. Chiss Ascendancy- Play as an officer of the CEDF, or take the fight to the Sith in their territory as a spy, assassin, or saboteur.

3. Rebellion- There is far less cohesion here than in the canon Rebel Alliance. Many Rebel factions with different goals work together only when it suits them. Some, like the Alderaanian Resistance, want to restore the Old Republic. Others, like the nobles of the Tapani Sector strive to eliminate the Sith so that they may claim the galactic throne for themselves. And still more, like the beleaguered Mandalorian Clans, simply want to burn the Empire that has oppressed them to the ground and damn the consequences.

4. Order of the Sith Lords- The secret legacy of the renegade Sith, Darth Bane. Only two playable characters, a master and an apprentice. They are behind the recent string of assassinations that has crippled the Brotherhood's Council of Lords, leaving it bogged down in petty, often violent infighting. Their goal is to push the Brotherhood to civil war, allowing them and their allies from the Tapani Sector to take power.

5. Jedi Order- On the far reaches of the Outer Rim, this ancient order of monastic peacekeepers has spent a millennium recovering in secret, preparing for the day that they would reveal themselves and topple the Empire built by their ancient enemies. For decades, Jedi agents have infiltrated nearly every aspect of the Sith Empire, stealing secrets and waiting for the time to strike a crippling blow.

As I glance over this list, I think it could only work if you limited the numbers to two or three per faction, or simply cut one or two factions out. Otherwise, the game would grow bloated and confusing.

I am have altely realized that my time in RPing and GMing might come to an natural end. Next February things will happen that will force me to withdraw from the board step by step. Maybe leaving this ownderful community for an unknown time in March, Arpil latest . . . well, that leaves me with the question what to do with my time I have left. As it is well known I am a friend of concentrated games with defined acts and limited players . . . the question I have to asnwer myself now is, what games will it be? I have time for two, I think. Approximately the length of my 133 ABY - The Cold Embrace. 150 - 450 posts (depends on players, always) . . .

This is what I came up with. Blurbs, concepts and ideas. IÂ´d love to hear whatever comment anyone wants to provide.

Star Wars

130 ABY - The Massacre of Ossus

Well, my farewel to the ABYverse concentrating on Jedi (only) in the final days of Ossus. A tragedy where I really want to reflect on serious topics and it would surely be a sad game . . . problem here is, Sinre needs to end his 129 ABY before I can do it, and that will probably not happen in time . . .

Lost on Lehon

Have you seen these wreckages on the Unknown Planet when you played KOTOR I? I wondered who was on them . . .

When the Republic Cargo-Transport Cronos has to take a detour to avoid a mandalorian raid it finds an unknown system and itself without any control of their ship anymore. Crashing and surviving only barely the people on board the ship, the passengers and crew and whoever else might have been there must now find a way to survive on a strange exotic planet somewhere in nowhere . . . and nobody is expected to come looking for them . . .

Droids

They have been build to serve. They are programmed to obey. They are expandable. They are slaves. No theyÂ´re not. They arenÂ´t alive. They arenÂ´t persons. They are things. They are worthless.

That is what the galaxy thought.

Vycer changed that.

And all Change comes with a certain pain.

Non Star Wars

1880 - The Man They Murdered Twice

The Victorian Age has been one of progress and prosperty, but also of brutal social distinctions. When a german diplomat is found dead in the streets of London the hunt for the murder is on . . . especially since the case is much more than simple murder. It threatens the foundations of the Empire itself.

An investigative adventure set in the Gaslight Era of the Victorian England.

The Hive - An Alternate Alien Adventure

Before Alien 3 was filmed there were 25 drafts of different stories. I felt the one they picked could never live up to the two master pieces that came before and actually never gave us a feeling of a consistent continuation.

The Hive will therefore begin where James CameronÂ´s Aliens left us and spin another version of the tale of what would have happened to Ripley, Sykes, Newt and Bishop. And especially the rest of the galaxy, the players. As they encounter once more the Alien . . .

All for the boys . . .

Is there an evil outside the human mind? An outer force influencing events? A group of investigators must answer this question for themselves when a terrible series of child-slaughter happen in a small town. And the latest victim is still missing . . .

A Mystery. Based on the german short story of the same name . . .

Charon

When three Astronauts awake from a fifteen year long stasis on their way to PlutoÂ´s moon Charon they find out not everything has gone to plan. And they are faced with the possibility of being the last humans in the galaxy . . .

A nice police procedural for the former, and something with xenomorphs and Colonial Marines for the second. Do you mean starting these games, or do they already exist, and you want to know which to join?

I was actually going to invite you and Sirak into Galaxy at War III but we suddenly went into hiatus mode between chapters (IV to start next Wednesday) - based on that nightclub shootout, I think you two creative engines would be great for us.

I might be flowing against the stream here but I love CHARON! The blurb tells little but I am intruiged. And I would love to see your take on a DROID based game. A lot unused potential there . . . frequently ignored by SW. (Do they feel to become to Asimovish?)

I think she talked to Bravo, Sith-I-5. He wanted to recruit players. From what I understnd (and there are surprises these days) we are toally fine to discuss how to get into certain games here . . . even though SirkRomar is in france and on holiday . . .

So, IÂ´ll have a look at GAW when it comes out. With 133 ABY ending soon, I might actually have free time. But entering a game that late is always difficult. Though the backstory is intruiging. I remember to have encountered characters and players from GAW once in another game. They did some impressive scenes there . . . and treated my char very good hihi.

STAR WARS: INTERVENTION (A story-telling style OT starfighter game) is always accepting players everyone. In fact, we're about to post a summary here soon to get anyone who wants to join caught up to date, so they don't have to read through 7 pages of posts. We've been wanting to get some new players for a little while now and we're at a spot in the story (and will be for a while) where getting new players into the game would be rather easy, considering the unfolding events that will be taking place here soon.

If anyone has any questions or wants to join, just send me or greyjdi125 (the Assistant Game Master) a PM.

I have lurked on some other pages lately, seen some other games and how they have been played. And I realized, well rerealized after having forgotten it, that other places do it differently. That there are other ways to play textbased games, actually. And some of them suit my availability and ability to participate here much better.

Therefore I think IÂ´ll do some experiments soon. See where they lead me. If anybody is interested to know more about it, please let me know. I still donÂ´t know how it will happen, but I am in the planning stages, right now.

Hmm. I'd be very interested. At one point I was trying to look for a Pern RP somewhere on the internet (because a Pern RP, for reasons obvious to anyone who's read it, won't fly here without a lot of tweaking) and all the play-by-email ones I came across had systems quite different to what we've got here. One thing I remember noticing was they had a very firm grip of time, and you were allowed to play in multiple 'times' simultaneously - morning, lunch and night, for example - but I don't know how they handled continuity ...

Yeah, there are lots of others out there and while itÂ´s always easy to ridicule others, I realized they are laughing about our ways too, because they appear to be strange. ThatÂ´s why I wanted to look into the concept of play-be-letter (thatÂ´s e-mail or PM then) RPing, as I had good experiences with it. Chats are something worthy thinking about. We Germans did that a lot lately, with some of us having LapTops not being able to access the page. Also the Summer Challenge Group Challenges went down like that, methinks.

But my focus is on the systems that are basically much alike to ours, but work differently. play-by-date is the first thing I wanna try. Concentrated posting over a few hours only, then have a few days break. Plan next scene and go with it. IÂ´ve seen incredible intense scenes and games come from this. And it needs less time and is more managable than the usual post, tag, wait routine. I did it with SirakRomar for the second Summer Challenge. It was good fun.

Another idea I am playing around with, that I find promising . . . will come up later. I need to run to work now.

Intriguing. Combine posts over IM used to be very popular - or at least reasonably common, when it came to character-driven conversations and the like. It seems to have more or less phased out (with the exception of you and Sirak in AFAS, I think), but they were a good way to avoid spending two weeks on a five-minutes-in-game conversation.

Play-by-date ... you mean like, set a time and day for everyone to be online and play out a scene in the thread? That would actually be pretty neat. I know whenever it so happens everyone in a scene is online and there's a flurry of posting (like happened recently in Man Cubs) it was awesome.

ThatÂ´s exactly what I am going for, Xany. And I realized the same, when I speed-played with Sirak. It is rewarding to get an immediate response, when youÂ´re still in character. And there are some legendary games out there, who did it that way. IÂ´ve read a little through Reigns of Steel yesterday, which has been downed by Wizards and folks. It was played Chapter by Chapter, Session by session. Like a played out book. I found that very appealing. I really wanna try it.

I've done both chat-posting and PM-posting. Chat-posting worked faster for me and if the same person is online, then PM-posting can work equally well.

Back in the day (a few years ago) the Jedi Outcasts would have huge night where just everybody would be online. It was really fun to have that anxious feeling to get you're post up before the next person did. It made RPing so much fun.

I don't think mass posting as a group, then take a few days off, would work in today's world. It could have worked a few years ago. But I think with most vets like myself, what we could do a few years ago, we can't really do now due to more life stuff. I think if you got players who were all generally off at the same time, it could be done. But even then, I don't think we have the player base and drive that we did years ago. With people all around the world and in different time zones, what normal posting for one person is 2 AM board time who lives in Australia, another person's is 8 PM board time. And I think time zones really have that affect when it comes to mass posting, especially if the players are not in high school or college full time and have jobs or do both work and college at the same time or those who have families and other duties (like work and school).

Well, Bravo, you make valid points, but my sole reply is, you make them from a very RPF-perspective. Webwide many of the old text-based RPers found themselves faced with jobs, college and families lately, as the people who are left from the first few generations of RPers on the Web. are now thirty-something. There have been many attempts to deal with that. The only one that was ever brought here was the Codex initiative, that is a little more succesful on other boards (that is an understatement, I am aware of that). Some where more successful, some where less. I myself can only participate here with heavy time-managment and therefore have to choose my games wisely. I actually find it a lot easier to participate on the one other board I am active on. Which uses a very different system of playing. Therefore I was amused for a long time that the three boards I know intimately have all developed apart from each other, unaware of the modus operandi of each other and thinking it impossible to do things differently from what they do.

Therefore, letÂ´s have a look at play-by-date. The chaos coming from many, many players posting things and you have to type up before they do, is not an issue. You donÂ´t do it with that many people. The largest game of that type IÂ´ve ever seen had five people. I would go for two players, three maximum. That is probably the sole reason why nobody on the RPF has come up with this, yet. Our obsession with the LARGE GAMES and doing FLAGSHIPS keeps us from doing it. The play-by-date is better suited for intense games with few players and a strong storyline with a definite end. You donÂ´t play RPF games that way. you have to adapt to the medium.
The same goes for timezones. While i know there is frequent chatting between various timezones . . . I believe some player are in regular contact with the Mofferance, some plan games entirely that way, there days and at least two german players have recently been forced to participate from out of asia almost EXCLUSIVELY through chats and combined posts . . . so I am sure we can arrange a time where somebody is online. Three people shouldnÂ´t be too much. Planned, outlined and ready to post for one to four hours . . . that is a regular chat I do with my pals. Maybe some will have to make some coffee and play at night, some will have to sit there in broad daylight and watch the sun go up. Obviously weekends are best suited for this and there are obviously players cut off from the chance to participate, because they cannot afford to spend that time on the net. But some are always unable to post. So, I think play-by-date is the way for those who can. All others have the "old ways" who work perfectly fine.

I see your point, LTF. I am coming from a purely RMF point of view. I've never played at any other boards, other then one other board I started at before I came to theforce.net, but I never really did anything there.

On the grand scheme of things, I don't know any other boards for specifically Star Wars other then theforce.net. And I feel so much at home here for the past nine years.

LordT you know what, it was about time someone thought into that direction. Well, why donÂ´t we use The Cold Embrace and my dear Darth Cruor as a testing ground? After your killing spree there are only two players left, anyway. So, why not have a back and forth with one of them? Sunday?